Adobe misses on revenue in Q3, adds nearly half a million paid Creative Cloud subscribers

Creative technologies company Adobe today released its third fiscal quarter financial results, revealing that it now has 2.81 million paying users for its Creative Cloud subscription service.

Adobe’s subscription service is growing, but the company missed analyst expectations. Adobe reported revenues of $1.005 billion and GAAP earnings per share of $0.09. Analysts had expected $1.02 billion in revenues with earnings of $0.26 per share.

Adobe’s subscription numbers are crucial to the company’s success going forward. Adobe abandoned its Creative Suite back in 2013, and with that move, traded annual software sales for a subscription service model. Now, as launch hype subsides, the service’s strong user growth this quarter is noteworthy.

According to the earnings report, the number of paying Creative Cloud subscribers grew by more than half a million quarter over quarter, up from 2.3 million in Q2 2014.

Before the bell, Adobe was up slightly by half a percent. In after-hours trading, Adobe was down by approximately 4 percent.